A year ago I started a study to see if eggshells decompose in soil; Eggshells – Decomposition Study. It is now one year later and time to have a look at the buried eggshells.
Eggshells – Decomposition After One Year
Campanula betulifolia
A lovely campanula for the rock garden, Campanula betulifolia has large flowers in white or light pink. The white form is more readily available. The flowers tend to point down so it is a good idea to locate the plant higher up so that it is easy to see inside the bells.
Hummingbird Nectar Food – Should You Buy It?
I was in the local hardware store and spotted some hummingbird nectar for sale. Bottles of red stuff and bottles of white stuff. Odd that they would have it in two colors. What is the difference, and is one better than the other?
The label on the bottle was interesting. This was a bottle of Perky-Pet Hummingbird Nectar Concentrate and the label clearly says it is ‘100% High Energy Sucrose’. Is that different from regular sucrose? I did not know that pure sucrose was a liquid! My myth busting antennae went up and I had to have a closer look.
Do you need to buy this product? I have been using a DIY solution for a couple of years and it seems to be working. Maybe I am short changing my hummingbirds? Should I fork out $7 for a better product?
Fish Fertilizer is Damaging the Environment
I always thought that fish fertilizer was an acceptable product. As a nitrogen source, it is very overpriced, as explained in Fish Fertilizer—Is It Worth Buying? But at least the fertilizer is being made from a resource that is a waste product, namely, fish guts (offal), bones, and heads. It seemed like a good use for this waste product.
But a comment left on my other post by Cynthia E. Olen, June 12, 2016, made me rethink things. Thank you, Cynthia.
Did you know that companies are harvesting whole fish to make the fertilizer? I didn’t believe it myself, but it is true.
Planting Trees the Right Way
Planting trees seems like such a simple thing to do, but most of the trees I see have not been planted correctly. A couple of years ago I was teaching a course on trees and wanted a picture showing the right way to plant a tree. I could not find one with Google, which illustrates the lack of understanding among gardeners and professionals.
Most advice on planting trees is wrong.
Everything in the post applies to both trees and shrubs – shrubs are just short trees.
Sterile Soil – Does it Really Exist?
There is lots of talk about using sterile soil. Some people even sterilize their soil before they use it. Others buy bags of sterile soil. All of this is done in an effort to reduce pests, diseases and sprouting seeds. This all seems to make a lot of sense but there are a couple of basic questions that one should ask;
- Does sterile soil really exist?
- Does sterile soil make a difference to your plants?
I’ll deal with the second question in my next post. Today I want to discuss the existence of sterile soil.
Erinus alpinus
Erinus alpinus has won the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit for being an outstanding plant to add to your rock garden or alpine trough, or let it naturalize in the tiny cracks of a brick wall. This alpine plant is a tiny thing that produces lots of flowers.
Organic Honey – Does It Exist?
I was driving home the other day and saw a sign: Organic Honey for Sale. I started thinking about this – what is organic honey? Are the bees only allowed to visit organic flowers? How do the beekeepers keep them from visiting non-organic gardens? Or maybe the bees are trained to spot the difference between organic and non-organic?
Organic honey may not be as pure as it is made out to be.
Soil and Compost – Selecting the Right One
You are in the market for some soil or compost and you visit the local nursery or big box store. There are so many products to choose from. Which one is the right one? Should you buy soil, or triple mix, or compost? Or is potting soil the right product to buy?
In this post I will try to sort out this confusion and show you which product to use for different types of jobs.
Eggshells – How Not to Use Them in the Garden
Almost weekly I see a post in social media extolling the benefits of adding eggshells to the garden. In this post I am going to have a serious look at all of the benefits claimed for eggshells. Which advice makes sense and which is just a lot of bull?
Topsoil, Compost, Triple Mix – What’s the Difference?
Go to any garden center and you will find a large range of products that all look like soil. Many names are used including topsoil, triple mix, compost, potting soil, black garden soil, peat moss and garden soil. What is the difference between all of these products? It can be very confusing.
Some of these products are marked as certified. What does that mean? What kind of guarantee do ‘certified’ soil products offer the consumer?
These and more dirty topics will be discussed in this blog post.
Does Fertilizer Kill Soil Bacteria?
Read most organic books or blogs and they will tell you that synthetic chemical fertilizers are killing the bacteria and fungi, the microbes, in soil. Dr. Ingham and her Soil Food Web preach this same message. Stop using fertilizers because they kill the bacteria and fungi. My review of Teaming With Microbes found the same message repeated several times.
Does fertilizers really kill bacteria or fungi in soil?
Some people claim that the ‘salts’ in fertilizer do the damage, but anyone making such a claim does not understand what happens to salts in soil. I’ll explain this in more detail below.
